Peruvian and Mattancherry food traditions meet in Fort Kochi on Feb. 4
A Peruvian researcher and the women of Mattancherry cook together at the Forplay Society in Fort Kochi. The event looks at what their food traditions share.
Published 3 February 2026
This has finished · 4 February 2026
- Dates
- 4 February 2026
- Times
- 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Where
Forplay Society
Art gallery · Opposite Kaycee Corporation, Bazaar Road, Mattancherry
Dearest Gentle Reader,
I am comfortably perched on a shelf at Forplay Society (I know what you are thinking, hooman, but it is not that). The society is on the busy Bazaar Road in Mattancherry, Fort Kochi. It is another humid afternoon for the friendliest cat in Fort Kochi, yours truly.
And here is what I see!
At one end of a table below me sits Daniela Zambrano Almidón. She is a Quechua researcher and artist from Lima. Her work focuses on decolonization through the stomach.
At the other end sit the women of the local Mattancherry community. They guard a culinary history that has already absorbed centuries of global influence, from Jewish traders to Portuguese explorers.
What may look like a culinary war is actually a laboratory of culinary friendship!
The alchemy of the kitchen
This is not just about fusion food. It is about “kitchen alchemy.”
The initiative looks for common threads between two cultures. These cultures sit 10,000 miles apart across the ocean, yet a history of colonial resilience unites them.
The Forplay Society hosts the event. It is not a lecture. It is a conversation over simmering pots.
Participants will explore:
- Memory in a jar. Pickling and preserving act as a way to store cultural knowledge.
- Andean technology. Participants look at how ancient Quechua practices relate to modern food security.
- The shared plate. Participants see how cooking together breaks down the barriers between “researcher” and “subject.”
Why you should care
In an age of hyper-digital connection, we have forgotten how to talk across a table. Daniela’s work suggests that food is the best example of a “relational process.”
When a Peruvian artist and a Kochi grandmother share a knife to peel a ginger root, they are not just making lunch. They are performing a quiet act of food, or rather good diplomacy.
For those in Kochi, it is a rare chance to see the world reflected in a local bowl. For everyone who cannot make it, this is a reminder. You find the deepest stories not in bookstores or on Netflix. You find them in the steam rising from a shared pot.